sepulcralis
i. immortality is a curse once-done.

she’d dwelt a hundred lives of men
upon those foreign shores
she could never call home,
but her blood has spilled thrice-time
upon these mortal lands
she now makes her grave.

when her lord father had bequeathed to her
vellum scrolls yellowed with age
and a golden crown encrusted with sea-stones,
she’d refused them.
what use, o noble sire, does a bastard girl
have with a princess’ crown?
you who sent my brother away—
he who dwelt in the womb with me,
i who have done naught for you
but refuse hand-picked suitors—
you now wish for me to play his filial part?
she’d sneered and laughed, those ageless eyes
snapping of moonshine
and the ocean’s impurity.

she still remembers
how he’d slipped ambrosia into her wine
and bound her to this loveless life
for an eternity without her womb-mate by her side;
she’d raged and thrown the empty vial
against his gilded throne,
but immortality is a curse once-done.

my gentle brother, if you
remember at all my love for you,
look down upon me
and grant me this one release:

she’d slipped from her lord father’s palace
on the back of a wind-lord’s eagle
and prayed for it to carry her
far beyond the ocean’s endless reach.

fly, my willful sister, for i shall grant you wings
to enter His dank domain;
He alone knows the secrets of mortality.